Teachers’ Contract Is Ratified in Camarillo : Labor: The agreement ends a 5-month dispute in the Pleasant Valley Elementary School District.

Teachers and school board members in Camarillo’s Pleasant Valley Elementary School District ratified a contract Thursday, ending a bitter five-month dispute over increases in salaries and benefits.

The votes came a day after both district officials and the teachers’ union had reported that a tentative agreement had fallen apart.

Ina Lea Parker, president of the 275-member Pleasant Valley Education Assn., said she did not have a final tally on the teachers’ vote, but other union officials said the results were overwhelmingly in favor of ratification.

Shortly after the teachers’ vote at Valle Lindo Elementary School, board members voted unanimously at a special meeting to ratify the contract, Supt. Shirley F. Carpenter said.

The district will need to make deep cuts in its $24-million budget to pay the salary increase and balance its budget next year, Carpenter said. The district’s budget committee will hold its first meeting today to begin looking at where to make cuts, she said.

The apparent obstacle to an earlier agreement, a clause requested by a union negotiator to protect teachers from retribution by the district, stemming from a one-day walkout earlier this month, will be negotiated with the help of a state mediator, Carpenter said.

Teachers and administrators expressed relief that the dispute was over.

“People are very, very happy,” said Roger Lininger, president-elect of the association. “The teachers are ready to get on with things.”

“We’re certainly pleased on our end,” said Assistant Supt. Howard M. Hamilton. “There’s a lot of relief that we can all get back to the business of educating kids.”

Teachers and the district had met with state mediator Draza Mrvichin four times after reaching an impasse in negotiations last December.

During that time, teachers had staged several protests, including the walkout, picketing school board meetings and stripping their classrooms of decorations that they had paid for themselves.

Carpenter said the district still plans to sue the union, charging unfair labor practice over the walkout. But she said individual teachers would not be punished.

“We feel the walkout was a strike and not something they should have done at the time,” Carpenter said. “But teachers took a day’s pay cut and, in a sense, disciplined themselves. It doesn’t make sense for us to go and do something to them on top of that.”

Under the terms of the contract, teachers will receive a 6.75% increase, retroactive to Aug. 31, 1990, the first day of the school year. Employee medical benefits will increase from $3,900 to $4,430 a year, retroactive to Jan. 1. Those benefits will increase to $5,000 beginning Oct. 1, 1991.

The union had sought an 8.5% increase and complete medical coverage. The district had offered a 5.91% raise and medical benefits increased to $4,430 a year.

The contract, originally set to expire in December, will be extended through June, 1992.

Teachers have complained that their salary range of $22,440 to $40,255 a year puts them in one of the lowest-paid districts in the county. They said the increase will help, but not much.

“It’ll bring us up, but it’s not going to put us in the middle” among the county’s 20 school districts, Lininger said.

After reports earlier this week of the most recent breakdown in negotiations, teachers and union officials said their offices had been besieged by calls from parents asking them to resolve the dispute.